Cuckoo's Nest Lobotomy

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Imagine living in a mental institution, and as the head nurse walks you down the hall, you are startled by a medical bed as it speeds out of a room, and fills the hallway with smoke. The nurse leads you into the room and your nose is overcome with the “acrid smell of sparks and ozone” (Kesey 77). You are suddenly strapped down to a cross-shaped table where the nurse places a crown on your head that sends electric sparks directly into your brain to induce a seizure. Doesn’t this solve the problem? Would it be better if the nurse took a knife and simply chopped away part of your brain? These are the treatments of electroconvulsive therapy and lobotomy as depicted in “One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest”, but are they truly as horrifying and gruesome as they are displayed to be? In the …show more content…
This, coupled with its effectiveness in controlling patients, underscores why ECT was a powerful tool in mental institutions during the time the novel was written. Similar to ECT, the effects and process of lobotomy is harshly described and exaggerated in the novel in comparison to reality. For example, when Harding is conversing with McMurphy regarding the treatment, he describes it as “chopping away the brain” (Kesey 108). Lobotomy is a separation of various parts of the brain in order to provide relief to individuals with mental illnesses that are unresponsive to other treatments. The strong negative connotation in “chopping” the brain once again highlights Harding’s attempt to exaggerate the effects of the treatment. In the same excerpt, he later likens the treatment to a gruesome and barbaric procedure, as he calls lobotomy “frontal-lobe castration”. This further adds to the hyperbolized phrases used in the novel to describe these procedures. These procedures were much more effective and less cruel in reality than they are depicted to be in the
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